Clavier Jahuaty, ig§7 $z 12 CLAVIER / JANUARY 1987 John with his father in 1947. .fife with. ‘Tat ft er

his month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Rubinstein, whom many con­ sider the greatest pianist who ever lived. His son, actor and composer John Rubinstein, reminisced about what it was like to grow up with an il­ lustrious father. When he acts as an interviewer for the series “A.T.&.T. Presents: Carnegie Hall Tonight,” Rubinstein says he simply asks what he would like to know. I followed exactly those guidelines in this interview and Rubinstein answered my questions with unusual candor and a willingness to share personal feelings, giving us one of the most affectionate, intimate, and fascinating portraits of his father to date. “My father was larger-than-life, a man who ex­ perienced life in such a voracious way that not much slipped through his fingers. He enjoyed everything — the weather, a movie he was 7 watching, a meal he was eating, good company, himself, a book — fully. His ability to concen­ trate set him apart, and obviously that was true at the piano. There was no break between the professional and the private family man. He was intense all the time, but when he was playing, something was added to him — a kind of purity. Nothing else interfered with his playing as things do in life, no other emotions. There was only one side to him at the piano, and this purity went straight from his mind and heart into his music, and from the music to the audience in one straight line. The moment he wasn’t playing he became multifaceted.” Apparently John never experienced the frustra­ tion of wanting the public figure to transform himself into the private father. “Don’t forget that when I was born he was almost 61, so he was from a different generation. He was born in the 1880s, and in those days people didn’t discuss and continually analyze The Child. Now it’s ‘How is The Child feeling about this?’ and ‘What effect does the parents’ behavior have on The Child?’ I have two children, and I’m always asking myself these questions. People of my father’s generation felt that the parents were the parents, the children were the children and were born to survive. Parents fed them, clothed them, gave them their education, and after that children were pretty much on their own. Parents didn’t sit around wondering whether they gave their kids enough ‘quality time.’

JANUARY 1987 / CLAVIER 13 “My father was more like my grandfather, and in the house. That gives you music. Then it’s a I accepted that. I never said, ‘Gee, Dad sure is question of what you do with it.” The siblings busy; why doesn’t he take me to ballgames?’ grew up “in two pairs,” as John puts it, about 10 This was my life. When he was playing the years apart. Eva and Paul are now in their 50s piano he was my daddy playing, and when he and John and Alina in their 40s. “Paul and Eva was having dinner with me he was my dad hav­ were both given piano lessons, but didn’t like ing dinner with me. I never felt ‘Ah, finally he them and stopped within a short time. My sister has stopped playing and is being Daddy now.’ Lali (Alina’s nickname, which means ‘doll’ in He was my daddy when he played in Carnegie Polish) and I took to the piano more. I could Hall and I stood there applauding him with the never sight-read well, though, and that always rest of the audience; I felt as close to him then infuriated my father, so I avoided playing as I did when the two of us were riding in a whenever he was in the house. taxicab telling each other dirty jokes. When he “There’s a difference, of course, between pian- traveled for five months, I really didn’t miss him. istic talent and musical talent. Eva became a My mother often stayed home and held things dancer; she danced with Agnes de Mille and together, but she also traveled with him and was Martha Graham, performed in Broadway musi­ always torn by her desire to be with him and to cals, and is now an eminent photographer. Paul, be with us.” who is also very musical, leaned more towards jazz and pop. He plays bass and piano, sings, and understands music, even though he became a stockbroker. Alina, a psychiatrist, is actually “I never felt, ‘Ah, finally he the best pianist of the four of us.” has stopped playing and is Being the youngest child in the family had its advantages for John. He spent every summer of being Daddy now.’ ” his seventh through seventeenth years with his parents on the concert circuit, going to parties with them, staying in hotels, eating in restau­ rants, and traveling throughout the world. What were Arthur Rubinstein’s practice hab­ “Those are the most formative years of your life, its? Were the children free to walk in and out? and while most kids whose parents were home “The piano was in the living room, but we all the time spent two or three months away at didn’t walk in or out. We grew up with an ap­ summer camp, I was with my parents all the preciation for concentration. There were no time. Maybe I was in the audience, or in a re­ rules, but we knew better than to distract or dis­ cording studio, or at the other end of a long turb him while he worked. The music just filled dinner table, but I was with them. Paris is very the house. He practiced relatively little. He much in my heart because I spent my summers would get up in the morning, have a long break­ there. I am a bicyclist, and the solitary part of fast, smoke a long cigar, read a long newspaper, my childhood I spent riding in and around the maybe even a book. A couple of hours before streets of Paris. I know every cobblestone and lunch he’d go down and practice, then he would many secret places.” Aniela Rubinstein, John’s take a long lunch, long coffee, long cigar, and mother, still lives in the apartment on the maybe have a long talk. In the afternoon he beautiful Avenue Foch. might go to the movies, or on some errands, and Surely a house filled with such music-making possibly come home and practice another hour and frequented by such houseguests as Picasso, or two before dinner, or maybe not. He would Stravinsky, and Ustinov could never be taken really practice only a couple of hours a day, for granted. “Wrong! Sure we took it for though when he had a big recording session or granted. If you grow up in Buckingham Palace concert coming up, or new pieces, he would find and you’re the Prince of Wales, that’s who you more time. When he had an appearance with an are. Children take their lives for granted. Now, orchestra, he’d find time for rehearsals, but he the older I get and the more I reflect on it, I see was never one to practice hour after hour after myself as having had a privileged upbringing. hour. He did it more or less as he needed it, and My father’s playing was special, as abused as usually before lunch.” that word may be. I truly believe that he stood out, and will continue to, as one of the greatest instrumentalists and interpretive artists of all ¿T ohn is the only one of the four Rubin- times. His artistry stands out for everybody: I stein children who made music a part of whether they only heard him once, came to his his career, although his brother and concerts year after year, whether they heard him sisters were also musically inclined. “We had in his 30s, or in his 80s, or hear him only now music pumped into our blood just by having it on the radio. So to have spent 17 major years

14 CLAVIER / JANUARY 1987 and quite a few periods afterwards hearing such extraordinary music in the house was special — John R ubinstein just to hear a difficult Rachmaninoff passage played 39 times in the next room!” pages for him all night. I think he felt I was John recalls an episode when father and son wasting my time listening to lightweight Verdi were in Rome. Rubinstein was recording Cho­ when I could have visited one of the wonders of pin, and he urged his teen-aged son to take a the world. Perhaps if it had been Meistersinger he side trip to Pompeii. John, however, did not would have understood. That was his favorite want to traipse over the ruins alone and insisted opera; he even named my sister Eva after the on staying in Rome to watch Solti, Merrill, and main character.” In retrospect, John realizes that Moffo record Rigoletto in an airless recording neither he nor his father were aware that these studio from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. “Then my father recording sessions were among his most impor- would show up at that studio at 7:30 and start recording the Chopin waltzes and I would turn

Broadway, television, and film actor; composer and musician; director and radio interviewer are all composite descriptions of John Rubinstein’s career. Most recently, he has costarred with Jack Warden in the television series “Crazy Like a Fox” and ap­ peared in G.B. Shaw’s Arms and the Man at the Pasadena Playhouse. John Rubinstein won the 1972-73 Theater World Award for his title role in Pippin and in 1980 he won Broadway’s highest honor, a Tony, as well as the Drama Desk Award, for his perform­ ance in Children of a Lesser God. Some of his subsequent roles were in Fools, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, and Hurlyburly on Broadway; on film, he has starred in Zachariah, Journey to Shiloh, The Trouble with Girls, The Boys from Brazil, and Daniel. He also hosts the national radio show “A.T.&.T. Presents: Carnegie Hall Tonight” for which he interviews world-renowned artists presented in concert on the pro­ grams. His musical heritage from his father and his mother, Aniela, daughter of the con­ ductor and composer Emil Mlynarski, has shown in John’s work as a composer. Since his first recognition at U.C.L.A. in 1966 for the score to The Short and Turbulent Reign of Roger Ginzburg, he has written film scores for The Candidate, Jeremiah Johnson, and Paddy and for numerous televison shows including the recent production of The Dollmaker. John has directed plays at New York University’s School of the Arts, and has performed as a keyboard player, singer, and composer for a jazz/rock band, Funzone. After many years he has returned to the piano, playing “pieces I love that my father played — Brahms, Chopin, and Bach.” He and actress Judi West have two children, Jessica and Michael.

JANUARY 1987 / CLAVIER 15 followed. John had never studied harmony, theory, or composition formally, but had picked up a lot hanging around rehearsal and recording studios. Rubinstein also enjoyed his son’s suc­ cesses in the theater. John recalls how his then aged father, in New York for a serious opera­ tion, was brought down the aisle in a wheelchair for his son’s tour de force performance in the stage play Children of a Lesser God. John doubts whether Rubinstein saw and heard everything that was going on, but is sure that he reveled in it.

erspectives naturally shift after the death of a parent, and John experienced a cer­ tain reassessment of himself. “My own identity shifted, but not my thoughts or feelings about him.” John once wrote, “Music was a way my father and I could talk without words. Noth­ ing I ever said to him gave him that glowing look he had when he’d heard some piece of Young John at the piano mine that pleased him. Although he was a re­ nowned talker, historian, jokester, and story­ teller, his truest and deepest heart was only — tant periods of musical education. It was there and always — revealed to me when he was play­ that he learned composition, orchestration, con­ ing the piano. That language was the first one I ducting, recording techniques, choral direction, knew. On the other hand, we had incredible vocal ranges, and more. “At the time he talks about everything. He was a great talker, thought I was merely lazy and not interested in but not as good a listener; he had so much on history or archaeology, and I thought I was just his mind, so much imagery and knowledge, so having fun. Four years later, when he was angry many memories he wanted to impart, that he about some other issue, he suddenly said, did not like to be quiet for long.” ‘. and that time when you refused to go to Arthur Rubinstein was of Polish descent, his Pompeii!’ He was still cross and still unaware of wife was of the same lineage; whenever they what those sessions had meant to me musically.” were at home they spoke in Polish, they cursed It was perhaps more difficult for John to follow in Polish, and they used Polish endearments. his heart and use his musical gifts having John considers himself definitely Polish; if there Rubinstein as his father. His parents were far is such a thing as “looking Polish,” he thinks he from thrilled about his plans to be an actor and does. Suddenly, with his flair for assuming roles to go straight from high school into acting and with a dash of his father’s puckishness, without going on to college. “They were trying John’s face assumed a veritable Polish caricature to talk me into alternatives, such as a conser­ as he described “the long pointy nose, narrow vatory, after which if I still wanted to act ...” bony face. Polish has a certain precision to it, John remembers a dinner party at which precise consonants and vowels” which John spat Laurence Olivier listened to these debates with out in an exaggerated, staccato accent. “Any an understanding ear and offered his advice to Pole I know talks like this. There’s a sharpness, the parents, “Look, if he doesn’t want to go to and a fierce joy, and wonderful grace and aristo­ college, maybe he should just hit the streets and cratic pride to the mannerism if it’s good, but if start working, because that’s how you become it’s bad, it’s sharp, it’s mean, obsequious, a bit an actor." “I looked at my parents as if to say, fawning, and small-minded.” John Rubinstein ‘Ha!’ and I went to college anyway, and I the actor offered this morsel of mimicry tongue- became an actor anyway.” (Years later he in-cheek and with great good humor and wit. worked closely with Laurence Olivier in the mo­ Unlike his son, Arthur Rubinstein’s giftedness tion picture The Boys from Brazil.) went entirely into the piano. He never wanted Though Rubinstein came with misgivings to to conduct or paint or compose. According to hear some of John’s first efforts in composition, John, he took writing the autobiographies very he was agreeably surprised when he heard his seriously, however, and found the project diffi­ son’s score for a musical at LJ.C.L.A. and at the cult, even though he surrounded himself with succession of film and television scores that soon dictionaries in several languages and his thesau­

16 CLAVIER / JANUARY 1987 rus. “I really think that in order to be that ex­ traordinary in one area, as he was on the piano, John Rubinstein you almost cannot do anything else, just as Picasso was a painter.” In fact, the two great old men were very much alike — outgoing, friendly, intense, proud, and funny. Myths naturally arise around men of that stat­ ure and yet John, when asked if he wished to shatter any of the myths about Rubinstein, re­ plied, “What myths?” To the appellations “man­ about-town,” “bon vivant,” “charmer,” “woman­ izer,” John replied, “He was a bon vivant; he loved champagne, fine cigars, beautiful women. Things become myths when they are repeated too often, that’s all. They become aggrandized by repetition. He also loved to read, but no one writes about that. He had a great library and read everything — Balzac, Proust, modern thrill­ ers like Simenon’s Inspector Maigret, books from the best-seller list, and classics. He read equally Arthur Rubinstein with Pablo Picasso in 1971. well in French and in English, but he could also read Polish, German, Italian, Spanish, Portu­ cut it?’ ‘Will I decline?’ ‘Will I lose my memory guese, and Russian. In his last years he read all or my fingers?’ ‘Will I be as good this year as last of Proust. He loved Goethe and Voltaire.” year?’ Those were enormous pressures and I’m John also shed some light on the way the not trying to minimize them, but he never had Rubinstein family responded to the surprising to say, ‘Well, my Carnegie Hall gig is over, relationship that developed between Rubinstein where do I work next?’ and his assistant during the last couple of years “I, on the other hand, have to keep worrying of his life. “It was a relationship we had to take about my next job. When I’m not busy, there’s a seriously, and we all had to deal with it in our certain anxiety and not much relaxation. But, own ways. It was a new set of circumstances. In like my father, I do love to relax.” some ways it was intrusive, obnoxious, disturb­ John’s children met their grandfather when ing, inconvenient, and hard to understand, but I they were very young. “I bemoan the fact that felt it was none of my business. It was very they never heard him play enough. They were much my mother’s business, of course, and quite too young when he was still playing publicly, painful for her, but she’s fine now.” and we were in Los Angeles when he played the last time in New York. Then he stopped playing altogether. They got to know him offstage, (1 ohn’s career has been multifaceted. He though, and he loved them.” I composes, orchestrates, is a distinguished John’s reflections reveal the strength of his stage actor, and is even an erstwhile relationship with his father. “If he had never tenor, performing in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass given me anything from his heart and mind and for a special celebration at Lincoln Center. time, I would feel that this great beloved public (While relating this episode, John issued forth a figure had merely sired me; I might feel a great high-pitched, tenor-like yowl to demonstrate. He lack and be bitter about things. But I spent 36 then explained that his role in the Broadway years of my life with a father who adored me musical Pippin had made him seem like a viable and who was one of the most interesting people vocal performer, although he doesn’t think in the world. We loved each other, we talked much of his own voice.) endlessly, and we had great fun together. He Has his father’s ability to budget life between played for me, took me with him everywhere, work and play rubbed off on John? “Well, I and he gave me my life. He gave me who I am.” work a great deal. Show business is different. My father didn’t have the concern that I do of where the next job is coming from — at least, he Carol Montparker is Senior Editor of Clavier. certainly didn’t in his 60s. Maybe he did when During the week of January 26, “A.T.&.T. Presents: he was my age, but by the time he was in his Carnegie Hall Tonight” will devote the entire program 50s, the last 40 years of his life, he never had to to a special tribute to Arthur Rubinstein, including seg­ worry ‘Will they want to hear me again?’ He was ments of historic recordings of his performances at booked three to four years in advance. He had Carnegie Hall. Check your local stations for exact air to worry about such things as ‘Will I be able to times.

JANUARY 1987 / CLAVIER 17 Tear o ff m ailing wrapper.